Lake Helen developing community story

Red Rock First Nation has been gathering stories from Elders over the past three years for an online community story project.
“We’ve been ... gathering information from each individual Elder about the history of this place and the stories that have been passed on from generation to generation,” said Red Rock Elder Terry Bouchard, the project’s consultation point person. “It’s going to be our own community story based on our own people’s information.”
Bouchard said a website for the community story will be developed by next year.
“Right now we’re in the process of just finishing up the individual interviews,” Bouchard said, noting about 30-40 community members ranging in age from 55-90 years old have been interviewed so far. “It’s very interesting. It’s just too bad we didn’t get this done years ago because there’s a lot of information and a lot of history here.”
Bouchard said one of the stories related to how the community was originally settled at the crossroads of Lake Superior and the Nipigon River.
“We were put here for a strategic reason, and that is to protect the upper Great Lakes from invaders,” Bouchard said.
In addition to the Elder’s stories, a “big collection” of photos has also been compiled as part of the five-year project.
Bouchard said the project will enable people seven generations from now to click on a person’s name to view videos of them telling their life story on a computer.
“They’ll be live here telling a story and we’re going to be long gone from here,” Bouchard said. “It’s going to be in archives here forever.”
The community had previously started two other projects in the past that were never completed to collect stories from Elders, including a project initiated about 20 years ago by Byron Wawia, Jr., the current project’s consultation points person administrative assistant.
“It was a little bit different,” Wawia said. “People like Terry (Bouchard) are a little bit more open. They weren’t as open back then, and now they are.”
Wawia taped stories by a number of Elders on cassette audiotapes, including Bouchard’s mother, which are still stored in the band office and will eventually be part of the current project.
“I really enjoyed working with Terry on all these interviews,” Wawia said. “I liked hearing the stories and there’s stuff I want to pass on to my children.”
Wawia said the stories are about a variety of subjects, including trapping, hunting and fishing.
“I’d like to hear more stories about my own grandmother,” Wawia said. “We tend to call her the Indian Annie Oakley. She did a lot of hunting and trapping and I hear stories about her packing moose out of the bush by herself. She was a big woman, over six feet tall.”
Bouchard and Wawia have gathered a “lot of data” over the past three years for the project, including bits of data from different people that tell a clearer story when combined.
“Nothing really did surprise me,” Bouchard said. “I’ve been here going on 63 years. What surprised me is they weren’t too reluctant to talk about their personal past.”